5 social media marketing tips for the holiday season

The holiday season can be a stressful one, especially for small to medium sized businesses and their owners. Family commitments, holiday shopping and managing day-to-day business operations combined can make things seem chaotic.

Holidays do not have to be stressful. They keys is to slow down and to set boundaries. Plan and focus on what is important, and you will be able to get through the next month without difficulty.

One area that overwhelms business owners is social media marketing. One in 4 business owners identifies it as one of the biggest causes of stress, in a recent survey conducted by our course instructors. Many of them also state that they have some difficulty managing posts, creating content, answering inquiries and advertising promotions on their social media channels.

With the right planning and tools, social media marketing can be the easiest digital strategy to manage. To save you time, our social media marketing courses instructors highlight 5 tactics that you can use to use social media during the holiday season. All there’s left to do for you is to go ahead and implement these strategies!

5 Tactics To Use Social Media For Your Business During the Holiday Season

1. Consider 12 Days of Giveaways or Sales

This year has been exceptionally difficult for families with CoVID lockdowns and social distancing limitations. Promotions like “12 Days of Giveaways” or Sales on social media can bring cheer to those families. Not only does the promotion have the potential to boost business awareness and increase product revenues, it is also a much cheaper way to advertise products and services than the traditional methods.

Remember that, while this is a holiday promotion, it is still important to relate it back to your brand. If you are a clothing company, do not give away free iPods. The product has nothing to do with your brand and will therefore not bring you any quality leads. This tactic should attract your target audience and grow your leads base.

2. Maintain Consistent Posting Schedules

For most businesses, the holiday season is the biggest time of the year. It is the one season that the entire year leads up to. For others, it is a slow time for sales and a time for family. However, do not let the insanely busy schedules or temporary closures interrupt the flow of your social media activity. Being consistent in your post frequency, even during slow and busy times, is important to the growth and engagement of your social media audience.

3. Embrace Trends

Embrace social media trends as they come. Trends are constantly emerging, growing and evolving. Some of them pop up out of the blue, while others appear as yearly returning trends.

Trends are an important and powerful tactic at your disposal this holiday season. Use trends (and hashtags) to post funny and silly videos, awkward challenges and genuine causes on your social media channels. Not only will it increase your engagement levels, but it will make your audience feel like they are part of the trend as well.

One of these trends this year is the usage of ‘stories’, a feature we’ve gotten familiar with thanks to Instagram. This year LinkedIn added the feature to their platform as well, making it possible to connect with a B2B audience through stories. Especially interactive stories where viewers can vote or send answers to questions are great for engagement.

4. Make Your Profiles Look and Feel Festive

Every social media platform allows you to customize your main account page. Why not utilize that space to get visitors into the spirit of the holidays? Add a festive image as your background or cover picture and update your bio to mention your holiday deals or to share a warm message or holiday greetings.

Remember: All images and videos, even holiday ones, should be optimized for each social media platform for optimal performance. They should also be removed once the holiday season is done.

Release your inner Picasso and create some stunning festive profile banners on Canva for free! Canva offers an intuitive design platform with a very small learning curve. There is no need to learn PhotoShop anymore when creating banners or ads for your social channels!

Screenshot of the Canva platform (source: Canva)

Free stock images or vectors can be found on numerous websites around the web, including:
–Pexels
–Pixabay
–Freepik

5. Start Planning Out Your Holiday Calendar Today

Creating a clear plan of what to publish and when makes it easier to manage social media during holidays.

For that, social media calendars and management tools are very useful. Posts and campaigns become very easy to schedule, edit, preview, and publish. Social media management tools also do an excellent job of aligning all staff to make sure everyone knows what needs to be done, eliminating publishing delays, setbacks etc.

Remember: Social media is not driven by automation. The human aspect must still exist. When creating your social media calendar, remember that trends may change and leave room for last minute posts and news.

Sprout Social among many others offers a post scheduling tool (source: Sprout Social)

DMAC Offers a Free Facebook & Instagram Social Media Marketing Course to Help Close the Skills Gap

Yes, you heard us right. DMAC is giving back to Canadians in these trying times. We are offering our , with certification for free. No strings attached and no credit card required.

Learn new skills by following this marketing course online! The course is ideal for all individuals interested in learning Facebook and Instagram marketing and advertising, including:

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Some of the topics covered in our course are: Importance of Social Media in today’s world of advertising.

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